Migrant Women and Work OOOOOttttthhhhheeeeerrrrr vvvvvooooollllluuuuummmmmeeeeesssss iiiiinnnnn ttttthhhhheeeee ssssseeeeerrrrriiiiieeeeesssss Volume 1: Transnational Migration and the Politics of Identity Editor: Meenakshi Thapan Volume 2: Poverty, Gender and Migration Editors: Sadhna Arya and Anupama Roy Volume 3: Gender, Conflict and Migration Editor: Navnita Chadha Behera Volume 5: Marriage and Migration Editors: Patricia Uberoi and Rajni Palriwala Women and Migration in Asia, Volume 4 S E : M T ERIES DITOR EENAKSHI HAPAN Migrant Women and Work Editor Anuja Agrawal SAGE Publications New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London Copyright © Gender Perspectives on Asia Programme, Developing Countries Research Centre, 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2006 by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483 Published by Tejeshwar Singh for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, phototypeset in 10/12 Aldine401BT by Star Compugraphics Private Limited, Delhi and printed at Avantika Printers, New Delhi. Fifth Printing 2016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Migrant women and work / editor, Anuja Agrawal. p. cm.—(Women and migration in Asia) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women migrant labor—Asia. 2. Alien labor, Asian. 3. Women— Employment—Foreign countries. I. Agrawal, Anuja, 1968–. II. Title. III. Series. HD6181.85.E97 331.4086'91—dc22 2006 2006001094 ISBN: 10: 0-7619-3456-1 (HB) 10: 81-7829-606-3 (India-HB) 13: 978-0-7619-3456-1 (HB) 13: 978-81-7829-606-7 (India-HB) 10: 0-7619-3457-X (PB) 10: 81-7829-607-1 (India-PB) 13: 978-0-7619-3457-8 (PB) 13: 978-81-7829-607-4 (India-PB) SAGE Production Team: Madhuparna Banerjee, Anindita Pandey, Girish Sharma and Santosh Rawat Contents SERIES INTRODUCTION 7 List of Maps 18 Acknowledgements 19 1 Introduction: Women, Work and Migration in Asia 21 Anuja Agrawal 2 Asian Women Workers in International Labour Migration: An Overview 46 Leela Gulati 3 Gendering Medical Migration: Asian Women Doctors in the UK 73 Parvati Raghuram 4 Caring for the Filipino Family: How Gender Differentiates the Economic Causes of Labour Migration 95 Rhacel Salazar Parreñas 5 Towards an Analysis of Social Mobility of Transnational Migrant Women: The Case of Filipina Domestic Workers 116 Chiho Ogaya 6 Beyond Duty and Desire: Reconsidering Motivations for Thai Women’s Migration to Bangkok 136 Alyson Brody 7 Indian Nurses in the Gulf: From Job Opportunity to Life Strategy 155 Marie Percot 8 Family, Migration and Prostitution: The Case of Bedia Community of North India 177 Anuja Agrawal 6 Migrant Women and Work 9 The Traffic in Women: Human Rights Violation or Migration for Work? 195 Sheila Jeffreys About the Editor and Contributors 218 Index 221 Series Introduction Migration and the movement it entails has always accompanied civ- ilisation in every stage of its development. Historically, people have moved from one place to another either by force in terms of slavery, or for reasons of colonisation. Towards the late 19th and early 20th centur- ies, international migrations began to be prompted by industrialisation and urbanisation. A shift in base and settlement, prompted by varied reasons and sponsored by different agents, is thus not a new concept. Unlike the early migrations, which were largely directed towards the north and the west, migration today cannot be understood in linear terms but rather in terms of fluid movements, within structural con- straints and continuities, the movements being marked by turbulence and change, and undertaken in multiple directions. In the contemporary context of globalisation, as has often been noted, the world is in a con- stant state of flux. People are presented with multiple worlds, images, things, persons, knowledge and information at the same time and at an ever-increasing pace. Moreover, the life cycle of each of these has been drastically shortened, such that the world we encounter is perceived and consumed largely in temporary terms. Change is then the only constant and the changes that characterise this external world we inhabit are internalised by us and have a significant impact on our lives and our perceptions about time and space. Individuals are forced in one way or the other to respond to the larger forces operating on them, since no one remains completely removed from the turmoil that surrounds them; the world having come closer, globalisation has facilitated the process of migration considering the forces of demand and supply, needs and gratifications, and the increased and easier possibility of movement and communication. In this process of movement, one undoubtedly leaves behind a familiar world to explore one’s chances in an alien land. The process of migration may thus have a constraining effect on us not only in struc- tural terms, of the choices made available, or cultural terms, but also in the sense in which it may include abuse and exploitation, and emotional and psychological distress. However, migration is largely undertaken 8 Migrant Women and Work with the positive hope of a better life in an unseen world. There is therefore a need to investigate the nuances and complexities entailed in this process and the way in which it impacts the lives and identities of the individual migrants in a world which is in constant flux and movement. Migration has earlier been explained in dual terms of the push and pull factors, i.e., the voluntarist perspective. It has also been understood from a structuralist perspective, whereby migration is mapped in dichot- omous terms of centre–periphery, industrialised–peasant based, west and north–east and south. However, both perspectives have limitations since the former has understood it in simplistic terms of an individual’s rationally calculated decision while the latter ended in economic deter- minism. In order to understand the phenomenon in all its complexity, a more holistic approach is required. Any theory of migration must account for it in terms of race, religion, nationality, sense of belonging and nostalgia. More significantly, much of the early literature on migration has been silent on the issue of ‘gender’ and there is thus a need to an- alyse the migration process and the differential experience of women and men in the context of a gendered world. Migration no doubt con- stitutes a complex subject of study, and an understanding based on the gender dimension serves to further enhance the complexity when we consider the multiple and heterogeneous backgrounds and experi- ence of migrant women and the very complex category of ‘woman’ herself. Within this framework, the initiative to publish the five volumes on aspects of ‘Women and Migration in Asia’ emerged from the ongoing programme on Gender Perspectives on Asia located at the Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi. The first activity of this programme was the international conference on Women and Migra- tion in Asia in December 2003. The conference was attended by partici- pants from all over the world including representatives from Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Singapore, France, Italy, Bangladesh, the UK, Israel, the Netherlands, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Trinidad and from within India. The five volumes are based on themes that emerged from the con- ference. It was proposed that the publication of these volumes would disseminate the deliberations, and their publication is a collective enter- prise aimed at understanding the gender implications of migration pro- cesses, for women, within and across Asian societies and globally. Series Introduction 9 Women and Migration in Asia Essentially, the endeavour to publish these five volumes is a critical re- sponse to migration theories that have failed to take into consideration the gender aspect thereby failing to account for the complex experience of migrant women. Migration is often perceived as being mainly a male movement, with women either being left behind or following their men folk as dependents. However, figures suggest that women have mi- grated in almost the same numbers as men, i.e., in the year 2000, there were 85 million female migrants as compared to the 90 million male mi- grants (Zlotnik as quoted in Jolly Bell and Narayanswamy 2003: 6). Women account for 46 per cent of the overall international migration from developing countries (ibid.). In addition, as compared to other continental regions, Asia has the maximum number of international migrants. There exist, however, disparities within the region in the sense that countries in South East Asia allow greater mobility for women owing to relatively more liberal attitudes than other South Asian and Arab countries. While men still form the majority of international migrants in Asia, there is an ever in- creasing number of women migrating in the region, as shown in Table 1: Table 1: Proportion of Female Migrants as a Percentage of Total International Migrants by the Region 1990 2000 South Asia 44.4 44.4 East and South East Asia 48.5 50.1 West Asia 47.9 48.3 Source: Zlotnik in Jolly, Bell and Narayanswamy. 2003 Despite the rising number of female migrants, women are not given equal importance as compared to men in migration, since they are still not perceived as equal actors worthy of being accounted for. According to the official records, the majority of women migrate legally merely as a part of family reunions. Those who migrate for employment purposes, thus find themselves doing so illegally, considering the rigid cultural and state ideologies and limiting visa policies and work permits regarding the movement of women especially in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan. Thus, while viewing women migrants as dependents, we may often ignore their individual economic contributions, and an analysis